Why This Photo of a Trans Woman and the Governor of Texas is Going Viral

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 24: Texas Governor Greg Abbott participates in a news briefing outside the West Wing after an Oval Office announcement with President Trump March 24, 2017 at the White House in Washington, DC. Charter Communications announced that the company is opening a call center in McAllen, Texas, creating 600 jobs. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Over the weekend, San-Antonio-based Ashley Smith posted a photo of her meeting Governor Greg Abbott to Facebook and Instagram along with the caption, "How will the Potty Police know I'm transgender if the Governor doesn't?"

The bill Abbott is attempting to pass would require people to use public bathroom facilities that correspond with the sex they were assigned on their birth certificates. This includes bathrooms at public and state-funded schools and universities, as well as in government buildings. The bill would also prevent cities from passing local non-discrimination ordinances to reverse the law in their area.

The Texas bill originally failed to pass the state's legislature. But Abbott called on lawmakers to reconvene for a special legislative session, beginning July 18, to push it through. "At a minimum, we need a law that protects the privacy of our children in our public schools," Abbott has said of the bill to reporters.

Trans rights advocates, meanwhile, point out that bathroom bills such as this one are not only discriminatory but potentially dangerous. "[Abbott's] willingness to waste taxpayer dollars to put transgender children’s safety and dignity on the chopping block is grossly irresponsible, at best, and downright abhorrent at worst," Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement last month. "State-sponsored discrimination — against transgender children or anyone else — is horrific."

Smith, for her part, chose her approach to critiquing Abbott's support for the bill carefully. "I did not think [shouting] would work, or that I would be heard and was more interested in the getting the photograph and not getting thrown out," she told the *San Antonio Express-News. She added that she hopes her photo sends an important message: trans people are "all over the place, we're your friends and your neighbors," she said. "Some of us are not immediately obvious as trans. And the idea that you are going to be able to enforce a bathroom bill, I mean the enforceability is just not there."